Headlines
KU Natural History Museum to reopen with two new exhibits
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Natural History Museum, part of the KU Biodiversity Institute, will reopen to the public Thursday, May 6. Public hours will be 1-5 p.m. The museum will feature two new exhibits: “The New Grotesques” and “KU Paleontology Up Close.”
Meet the freaky fanged frog from the Philippines
LAWRENCE — Researchers at the University of Kansas have described a new species of fanged frog discovered in the Philippines that’s nearly indistinguishable from a species on a neighboring island except for its unique mating call and key differences in its genome. The KU-led team has just published its findings in the peer-reviewed journal Ichthyology & Herpetology.
Video games shape how Americans understand historical events
LAWRENCE — A newly published scholarly article by a University of Kansas researcher examines the role video games have in shaping players’ interest in history — World War II, for instance — which cultivates knowledge in areas they might not normally be interested in. “Historians should take historical video games more seriously as a way of understanding how the public constructs its knowledge of the past,” said author Andrew Denning, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.
Counseling screening tool works for military and nonmilitary college students, study finds
LAWRENCE — How effective are the most common counseling and psychological screening tools on college campuses for veterans? Newly published research from the University of Kansas reviews the effectiveness of the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms for both military and nonmilitary students. It also takes into consideration the range of counseling needs that veterans might require to succeed in a higher education setting.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Anne Tangeman, Natural History Museum, 785-864-2965, [email protected], @kunhm
KU Natural History Museum to reopen with two new exhibits
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Natural History Museum, part of the KU Biodiversity Institute, will reopen to the public Thursday, May 6. Public hours will be 1-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Advance reservations are encouraged due to reduced capacity, which aligns with current health and safety guidelines.
The museum will feature two new exhibits in addition to longtime favorites such as the 45-foot-long Bunker mosasaur fossil, the living Paleo Garden and others. “The New Grotesques” temporary exhibit gives visitors a unique opportunity to view eight newly carved grotesques, commissioned to replace the originals that resided on Dyche Hall for over 117 years. The new grotesques, created by local master stone carvers Laura and Karl Ramberg, are on display in the Panorama gallery, along with sketches and scale models from the artists. A short documentary video is also available that provides further insights into the project. The new carvings will be placed on top of the building at a future date. The original carvings were removed in 2017 due to damage from the elements and are now on view on the museum’s sixth floor.
Visitors can also traverse hundreds of millions of years of evolution in a new permanent exhibit, “KU Paleontology Up Close,” on the museum’s third floor. Plant and animal fossils, including rarely seen small specimens, illustrate evolutionary changes through time and highlight several KU research discoveries from the Biodiversity Institute’s Paleontology research divisions.
For questions or assistance in making advance reservations to visit the KU Natural History Museum, please contact Visitor Services at 785-864-4450.
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Meet the freaky fanged frog from the Philippines
LAWRENCE — Researchers at the University of Kansas have described a new species of fanged frog discovered in the Philippines that’s nearly indistinguishable from a species on a neighboring island except for its unique mating call and key differences in its genome.
The KU-led team has just published its findings in the peer-reviewed journal Ichthyology & Herpetology.
“This is what we call a cryptic species because it was hiding in plain sight in front of biologists, for many, many years,” said lead author Mark Herr, a doctoral student at the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum and Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. “Scientists for the last 100 years thought that these frogs were just the same species as frogs on a different island in the Philippines because they couldn’t tell them apart physically. We ran a bunch of analyses — and they do indeed look identical to the naked eye — however, they are genetically isolated. We also found differences in their mating calls. They sound quite different. So, it was a case of using acoustics to determine that the species was different, as well as the new genetic information.”
Genetic samples of the new frog, known scientifically as Limnonectes beloncioi (or commonly as the Mindoro Fanged Frog), were collected years ago by KU scientists working in the field on Mindoro Island in the central Philippines but weren’t analyzed until recently. Because of its nearly identical physical similarity to a fanged frog on the island of Palawan, called Acanth’s Fanged Frog, it was assumed to be the same species.
“You can look at two different things, but to the human eye without intensive investigation they might seem the same,” Herr said. “So, we took a bunch of measurements of hundreds of these frogs — how long their digits were specifically, how wide the tip of their toe was, the length of one specific segment of their leg, the diameter of their eye — in order to compare populations statistically, even if we thought they look the same. We ran statistical analyses on body shape and size, including a principal component analysis which uses all the measurements at once to compare the frog morphology in multivariate space. After all that, just like the scientists before us, we found nothing to differentiate the frogs based on the shape of their bodies and their size.”
However, because the fanged frogs inhabit islands separated by miles and miles of ocean, the researchers had doubts they were the same species, in part because they had different-sounding calls. They decided to analyze the frogs’ genome and determined the Mindoro Fanged Frog qualified as its own distinct species.
“We ran genetic analyses of these frogs using some specific genetic markers, and we used a molecular clock model just to get a very basic estimate how long we thought that these frogs may have been separated from one another,” Herr said. “We found they’re related to each other, they are each other’s close relatives, but we found they’d been separate for two to six million years — it’s a really long time for these frogs. And it’s very interesting that they still look so similar but sound different.”
The KU graduate student specializes in studying the many species of fanged frog across Southeast Asia, where he’s carried out extensive fieldwork. He said the frogs’ fangs likely are used in combat for access to prime mating sites and to protect themselves from predators. The Mindoro Fanged Frog, a stream frog, is sometimes hunted by people for food.
But the frog’s characteristic call, different from Acanth’s Fanged Frog, proved difficult for researchers to record.
“They’re really wary of us when we’re out there with our sound recorders trying to get recordings of these frogs — that’s a really tough aspect, and we were lucky in this project that we had people over many years that were out there and had recorded both of these frogs on Palawan and Mindoro. So, we had recordings from both islands, and that’s kind of rare with this group of fanged frogs because people eat them. They call at night, but the second a flashlight or human voice wanders into the equation they’re just going to take off — because they know that they can be killed by people.”
Herr’s description of the Mindoro Fanged Frog continues a long tradition of KU field research into the herpetological biodiversity of the Philippines and Southeast Asia, according to his faculty adviser Rafe Brown, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and curator-in-charge of the Herpetology Division of the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.
“Mark’s discovery reinforces a lesson we’ve learned over and over through the years — things we thought we knew, combined with new information, emerge to teach us something completely unexpected,” Brown said. “A century ago, KU professor Edward Taylor identified the Mindoro Island population as Acanth’s Fanged Frog, the same species as he had named, a few years before, from Palawan Island — an arrangement that made very little sense. Zoom forward a hundred years, and we find with new technology, genetic information and bioacoustic data that the two islands’ populations are actually very well-differentiated, as we would expect. But not morphologically; their physical characteristics have not diverged. This is a case in which the formation of species has not been accompanied by morphological differentiation — so called ‘cryptic speciation.’”
Herr’s co-authors on the new paper are Brown; KU graduate students Johana Goyes Vallejos and Robin Abraham; Camila Meneses of the University of the Philippines at Los Baños; Rayanna Otterholt of Haskell Indian Nations University; Cameron Siler of the University of Oklahoma; and Edmund Leo B. Rico of the Center for Conservation Innovations and College of Sciences De La Salle University-Dasmariñas, Philippines.
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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]
Video games shape how Americans understand historical events
LAWRENCE — Participants in esports have recently become regarded as actual athletes. Now other video game players are apparently aspiring historians.
That’s one of the contentions of an article titled “Deep Play? Video Games and the Historical Imaginary.”
“Historians should take historical video games more seriously as a way of understanding how the public constructs its knowledge of the past,” said author Andrew Denning, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.
His article examines the role video games have in shaping players’ interest in history — World War II, for instance — which cultivates hyperspecific, esoteric knowledge in areas they might not normally be interested in. It appears in the current issue of American Historical Review.
“Video games become these flash points for discussions about politics,” he said. “They are part of a much broader public engagement with history in which the appeal is less in understanding the past as it really occurred and more in knowing enough about the past to make the precise political points you want to make that day.”
He cites recent games such as “Call of Duty: WWII,” “Wolfenstein: The New Order,” “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” and “Red Dead Redemption II” that are designed for entertainment but also help inform people’s perceptions of the eras in which they are set.
The time period receiving the majority of this attention is the 1940s. Simply put: People remain fascinated by Nazi Germany, whether it’s through historical research or manipulating a joystick.
“There are a lot of reasons for this that are uniquely American and some that are more general to the Western world,” he said. “In a general sense, the horror of the Nazi experiments draws people in. It’s a way of staring into the void and plumbing the historical depths of human depravity.”
For Americans in particular, the darkness of the Third Reich serves as a cautionary tale for global superpowers.
“World War II is the last time the United States was the unqualified good guy. Global conflicts that occurred after that — Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East — don’t result in the obvious destruction of an evil enemy and often involve more domestic and internal division than international success,” he said.
Yet Denning notes that during his research he found some of the games crossed into territory where the blur of history and entertainment proved disconcerting.
“Killing faceless Nazis is okay in a video game. But once a player is more realistically placed in the role of a victim — with the implications of ethnic cleansing and genocide — it becomes rather uncomfortable,” he said.
He also notes how in the Wolfenstein series, for example, all Germans are depicted as bloodthirsty Nazis. In a virtual world, there is no gray area.
“It’s always difficult to give a fully rendered version of the past or a 360-degree view of things,” he said.
“Historical scholarship on Nazi Germany has really moved toward comprehending a kind of spectrum of involvement. It wasn’t that you were either a member of the Nazi party or a member of the resistance. There’s a whole range of ways of engaging with the Nazi regime, whether you’re a domestic German before the war starts or a sympathizer in an occupied area in France. In occupied places like Poland, one could be both a victim of the Nazis and also a perpetrator of anti-Semitic violence. These levels of complication don’t make it into games.”
Denning’s own introduction to such games began innocuously with the original Nintendo version of “Super Mario Bros.”
“Video games were my reason for existence as a child,” he said.
“But you may remember from this era that Mario used to come with ‘Duck Hunt,’ and there was a laser gun for duck hunting. The fact that my initial engagement involves gun violence is so inherent to video game culture.”
Denning claims he first encountered history-based material when playing the original Wolfenstein 3D computer game in the early 1990s.
“Three of my four grandparents were in the Navy during World War II,” he said. “When I was told that I had to do some reading to earn video game time, I’d go into the office and peel through these very well-illustrated Time-Life histories. The Wolfenstein game is where I saw those two threads coming together.”
A faculty member at KU since 2015, Denning researches 20th century European history. He admits to having mostly retired from video games because “work and play are now at loggerheads.”
The professor would like to see “Deep Play” provide historians with a better understanding of how the public comprehends their respective fields.
“I hope it starts a conversation between video game players and historians to see how we both might learn from one another,” he said. “I also hope it’s a teaching tool where some of my colleagues might assign it to help their students discover how they got interested in this subject and how we can build on this to develop a more subtle, nuanced knowledge of the subject.”
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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
Counseling screening tool works for military and nonmilitary college students, study finds
LAWRENCE — Since the 1940s, the GI Bill has helped provide educational benefits after service members complete military service. The most recent legislation, the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, known as the Forever GI Bill, has expanded benefits and reduced restrictions, leading more veterans and their dependents to seek higher education. Those veterans often bring with them experiences requiring support and counseling beyond the commonly discussed post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet until now, little research has examined how well the most common counseling and psychological screening tools on college campuses work for veterans.
“There’s a common stereotype that all veterans are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries. But there are other things to understand about their experiences, such as their family situation, what branch of service they were in, what they are studying, their goals, their age and much more,” said Arpita Ghosh, assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Kansas. Ghosh is a co-author of a new study about counseling services for veterans enrolled in higher education.
To better understand how veterans are served, Ghosh and co-authors tested the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms – 34, a shorter version of the CCAPS – 62, both developed by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Pennsylvania State University. The study was published in the journal Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development. It was co-written by Christopher Niileksela, assistant professor of educational psychology, and Aisha Parham, doctoral candidate in counseling psychology, all of KU, and Rebecca Janis of Penn State.
“It’s a good measure to see what a person is coming into counseling with. Counselors will often use the CCAPS 62 or 34 every few sessions to see if clients are making improvements,” Ghosh said. “Basically, we’re trying to see if the measure’s subscales hold well both for veterans and nonveteran students.”
The CCAPS – 34 assesses seven types of psychological symptoms common in clients at university and college counseling centers: Academic distress, alcohol use, depression, eating concerns, generalized anxiety, hostility and social anxiety. Researchers analyzed data from 2014 to 2016 of more than 174,000 clients at such counseling centers across the United States to assess both veteran and nonveteran students’ mental health concerns. They compared more than 2,800 students who had military experience with an equal number of randomly selected students who did not. Researchers then ran analyses on the data set to see if there was factorial invariance, meaning if the tool measured the same constructs across both groups.
For all seven psychological symptoms and subscales, the CCAPS – 34 worked evenly for both groups. Only one item on the generalized anxiety subscale, “I have sleep difficulty,” showed differences across the groups. Ghosh said it was not immediately clear why that item was different for the groups, as it did not delve into what kinds of sleep difficulty a person might have, or why they may have difficulty, such as an effect of anxiety, PTSD or something else.
The analyses are an encouraging sign that the CCAPS – 34 is working well for both veteran and nonveteran students. While it is important to verify its validity for both groups through research, the study’s authors argue the assessment should only be part of a much-larger understanding of what each person who visits a UCCC is going through. Previous research has shown that veterans in higher education often have interpersonal struggles and difficulty relating with classmates, professors and others on campus who do not share or understand their life experiences. It is also vital to know a client as a more complete person, because they might underreport symptoms, not understand the importance of certain issues or even be uncomfortable discussing certain aspects of their lives and experiences with counselors.
Ghosh said she and colleagues are continuing to evaluate other psychological screening tools for both veterans and nonmilitary college students. This study helps show their methodology of assessing such screening tools is valid and can be used to study the effectiveness of others, such as those that assess career readiness of veterans in higher education.
Because of the large number of veterans seeking education, university and college counseling centers are vital to providing services and supports they need.
“UCCCs need to be equipped to deal with veterans’ issues, because the VA and Department of Defense aren’t necessarily set up to serve the sheer number of veterans we have. The demand is there, but the supply of counselors who understand veterans’ issues is limited,” Ghosh said. “And it’s important to see our clients through a holistic lens. There are things the CCAPS – 34 doesn’t consider, like branch of service, era a person served in, if they saw combat and so much more. All of those factors can contribute to how a person responds to counseling.”
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